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The Threat of Russian Organized Crime

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The Threat of Russian Organized Crime 01-Covers 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page 1 U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice The Threat of Russian Organized Crime James O. Finckenauer and Yuri A.Voronin Issues in International Crime 01-Covers 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page 2 U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, DC 20531 John Ashcroft Attorney General Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij 02-Inside 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page i The Threat of Russian Organized Crime James O. Finckenauer and Yuri A.Voronin June 2001 NCJ 187085 Issues in International Crime 02-Inside 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page ii National Institute of Justice James O. Finckenauer is director of the International Center of the National Institute of Justice, which is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. He is on leave from the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice, where he is a professor of criminal justice. Professor Finckenauer is the author or coauthor of six books as well as numerous articles and reports. His latest books are Russian Mafia in America (Northeastern University Press, 1998) and Scared Straight and the Panacea Phenomenon Revisited (Waveland Press, 1999). Yuri A. Voronin served as a visiting international fellow with the National Institute of Justice from March 1, 1999, to March 1, 2000. At the time of his fellowship, he was both a full professor at the Urals State Law Academy and director of the Organized Crime Study Center at the Urals State Law Academy. Portions of this report were prepared for the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, under grant number 1999–IJ–CX–0014 to Yuri A. Voronin with funds transferred from the U.S. Department of State. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. 02-Inside 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page iii The Threat of Russian Organized Crime CONTENTS Introduction..........................................................................................................1 Historical, Political, and Economic Aspects......................................................3 Political and Economic Linkages ................................................................7 The Legal and Law Enforcement Context....................................................9 The Development of Organized Crime in the Urals ......................................10 Contemporary Issues Concerning Organized Crime in the Urals ................16 The Future of Organized Crime in the Urals..................................................28 Notes ..................................................................................................................30 iii 02-Inside 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page 1 The Threat of Russian Organized Crime INTRODUCTION A long smear of blood on the road marks the place where two masked men shot dead one of Russia’s most prominent industrialists . outside his house in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Oleg Belonenko, 51, managing director of Uralmash, the largest industrial company in Russia, had just got in this grey Volga car to go to work when two men in track- suits opened fire with pistols, hitting him in the head and his driver in the stomach. Both men died in hospital. Mr. Belonenko’s murder . once again shows the power and ruthlessness of criminal gangs who control large sections of Russia’s economy.1 n the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has become the target of a new global crime threat from criminal organizations and criminal I activities that have poured forth over the borders of Russia and other former Soviet republics such as Ukraine. The nature and variety of the crimes being com- mitted seems unlimited—drugs, arms trafficking, stolen automobiles, trafficking in women and children, and money laundering are among the most prevalent. The spillover is particularly troubling to Europe (and especially Eastern Europe) because of its geographical proximity to Russia, and to Israel, because of its large numbers of Russian immigrants. But no area of the world seems immune to this menace, espe- cially not the United States. America is the land of opportunity for unloading crimi- nal goods and laundering dirty money. For that reason—and because, unfortunately, much of the examination of Russian organized crime (the so-called “Russian Mafia”) to date has been rather hyperbolic and sketchy—we believe it is important to step back and take an objective look at this growing phenomenon. Just what is this Russian Mafia? What does it look like? Where does it come from? What does it do? And how does it do it? We hope that through addressing these questions we can provide a context for assessing how much of a threat Russian crime might be to the United States—directly or indirectly—and how concerned we should be. Let us begin by providing some context for our discussion. First, the reader should know that defining organized crime is a matter of some dispute among scholars and law enforcement specialists. That disagreement is heightened when the subject, as in this case, becomes transnational organized crime. We will not, however, venture into this controversy here. Instead, we will simply provide our own working definition of organized crime: 1 02-Inside 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page 2 Issues in International Crime Organized crime is crime committed by criminal organizations whose existence has continuity over time and across crimes, and that use systematic violence and corruption to facilitate their criminal activities. These criminal organizations have varying capacities to inflict economic, physical, psychological, and societal harm. The greater their capacity to harm, the greater the danger they pose to society. As in the United States, there is no universally accepted definition of organized crime in Russia, in major part because Russian law (like U.S. law) provides no legal definition of organized crime. Analysis of criminological sources, however, enables one to identify some of its basic characteristics.2 These include organizational fea- tures that make Russian organized crime unique in the degree to which it is embed- ded in the post-Soviet political system. At the same time, however, it has certain features in common with such other well-known varieties of organized crime as the Italian Mafia. The latter has a complicated history that includes both cooperation and conflict with the Italian state. Much more than was ever the case with the Italian Mafia, however, Russian organized crime is uniquely a descendant of the Soviet state. Russian organized crime has come to plague many areas of the globe since the demise of the Soviet Union just more than a decade ago. The transnational character of Russian organized crime, when coupled with its high degree of sophistication and ruthlessness, has attracted the world’s attention and concern to what has become known as a global Russian Mafia. Along with this concern, however, has come a fair amount of misunderstanding and stereotyping with respect to Russian organized crime. It is this combination that has stimulated our work on this report. We want to try to clear up some of the misunderstanding and misinformation and also to try to ensure that where there is concern, it is well-founded. To do so, we will trace some of the contextual features—historical, political and economic—of Russian organized crime. We will look briefly at moves by the Russian government since 1991 to cope with its crime problem. Then we will present a case study of organized crime in the Urals region of Russia. It was there that the killings described in our opening vignette occurred. As with any case study, our purpose in focusing on the Urals is to capture and examine in microcosm what has otherwise been explored mostly in macrocosm and purely descriptive forms. We will conclude with a brief discussion of the real and potential impacts of Russian organized crime on the United States. 2 02-Inside 7/30/01 3:38 PM Page 3 The Threat of Russian Organized Crime HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS Organized crime is a historical phenomenon that has existed for hundreds, and in some cases, for thousands of years in many different societies. But interestingly, unlike common crime, true organized crime as we define it is not present every- where. Certain characteristics seem to differentiate countries burdened by organized crime from those that are not. Some of these characteristics appear simply to be coexisting conditions, whereas others are facilitators, and yet still others could actu- ally qualify as causes of organized crime. The general level of crime in a country is an apparent primary condition for organ- ized crime. High-crime countries are more likely than low-crime countries to have organized crime. This is because organized crime and common crime are influenced by many of the same factors. Crime is related to the degree of urbanization and industrialization and to social disorganization—factors that produce criminal oppor- tunities and thus more crime. Organized crime is especially likely to be more preva- lent in cities and countries with advanced levels of economic development, the history of the Mafia in rural Sicily to the contrary notwithstanding. Economic devel- opment, industrialization, and urbanization both stimulate and facilitate demand for goods and services. These include goods and services that are illegal (such as drugs), regulated (such as cigarettes or guns), or simply in short supply. When there is a plentiful supply of a legal, unregulated product, there is no incentive for organized crime to become a supplier.
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